The 150th anniversary of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences : addresses of the foreign guests / 150 let Biblioteke Vengerskoj Akademii Nauk

The Bodleian. Library greets the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences In 1966 the Victoria and Albert Museum of London organised an exhibition of Hungarian art treasures, consisting largely of objects lent by Hungary. This exhibition symbolised the relations of friendship which have for long existed between Hungary and Great Britain. The Bodleian Library lent for this exhibition one of its most precious possessions. This was a fifteenth-century Venetian manuscript of the Tragedies of Seneca which was presented to the Bodleian in 1608, six years after the opening of the Library, by Sir Henry Lillo, Consul of the English Merchants in Constantinople. A previous owner of this manuscript was Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, whose arms are embossed on the rich morocco binding and whose library was world-famous. Eight years later Christopher Reitinger, Hungarian by nation and physician by profession, made his will leaving to 'the most renowned Library erected in Oxford by Sir Thomas Bodley, Knight' a golden seal attached to a charter of the Grand Duke of Muscovy (in whose household he had served for seven years as a physician) and the sum, most generous in those lays, of £10 for the purchase of books. The Library's book of benefactors still lists the many works purchased from this gift. The connection of the Bodleian in things Hungarian is thus attested from its earliest years. In addition to Hungarian works acquired in the ordinary course of the Library's activities, a large collection of Libri Hungarici was acquired in 1850.